Tiina Puumalainen:

“The beautiful art of puppetry has always fascinated me. In the early years of my career I studied puppetry and puppet making in various productions. Most of that work was documented poorly or the original photos are lost - but the experiences never vanished.

I am often deeply touched by puppet performances, but maybe even more by the audience’s loving response to them. It never seizes to amaze me: puppets seem to add layers of emotions to the drama in a very unique way.

So, the studies continue - and combining puppetry to a traditional drama is going to be happening a lot in our productions in the near future. “

ABOUT THE PHOTOS ON THIS PAGE

Production photos © Teppo Järvinen

Making of- photos © Tiina Puumalainen

Valokuvavarkaat Stolen Family Album is a drama about a female artist - Anelma - struggling with her work and family issues.

Many scenes involved devastating childhood memories. These were performed by puppets Tiina made for the production. Anelma paints naïve art, so the puppets were designed to look like what her paintings might be. Mother, Sister Ansa, Brother, Uncle and Father were all manipulated in different ways, and their size varied from 10 cm to 4 m.

In the beginning of Valokuvavarkaat Mother and Ansa were huge, tall and slim creatures, but during the play they became smaller and smaller as Anelma started to cope with her past.

In the end the memories and especially Brother became an inspiration. Finally Anelma was able to let the past go, and he flew away.

There is also one photo (Photo Teppo Järvinen) from The Grump’s Finland: the horse on stage was a puppet manipulated by one person.